During the 1950s, at the height of I Love Lucy’s popularity, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz often bowled together in celebrity leagues and charity events. Lucy was surprisingly serious about the game. According to friends and co-stars, she could be fiercely competitive on the lanes — always wanting to improve her game and win.

One story frequently told by those who knew her: Lucille was once bowling with a group of friends and kept missing easy spares. Frustrated, she dramatically flopped down on the ball return in mock despair, declaring: “How can I be America’s favorite redhead when I can’t even knock down ten pins?!”

Her friends roared with laughter — typical Lucy — turning her own frustration into a perfectly timed bit. That blend of physical comedy and quick wit was her real-life personality too.

Later in life, she even had a small bowling lane installed in her home so she could practice privately. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, once joked that Lucy would bowl in full makeup and outfit, as if ready to walk onto a sitcom set at any moment.

Andrée Geulen on Rue Neuve in Brussels in May 1944, with behind her a German soldier. Hidden under the innersole of her shoe are the names of two children she is on her way to rescue.

Andree Geulen (left) with Ida Sterno (right).

Ida and Andrée.

After the war, Geulen became involved with the Jewish community in Belgium and maintained contact with the children with whom she had come into contact. She was involved in trying to reunite the hidden children with surviving family members and became actively involved in the relief organization Aid for Israelite Victims of the War which supported Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps in Belgium. She became involved in activism for pacifist and anti-racist causes. She married Charles Herscovici, a Jewish concentration camp survivor of Roma origin, in 1948.

Maureen has openly shared that during this time she was struggling personally, including battles with addiction — all of which were later detailed in the book Love to Love You Bradys by Susan Olsen, which recounts McCormick’s absence from some tapings and other challenges.

“For most of my life, I have been followed, and sometimes haunted, by Marcia Brady. I don’t have a choice in the matter. Imagine always being shadowed by a younger, prettier, more popular you.”

The format blended elaborate musical numbers, celebrity guest appearances (including Donny & Marie Osmond, Tony Randall, Farrah Fawcett, Vincent Price, Rich Little, Charo, and more), dance routines by the “Krofftettes,” and backstage-driven comedic sketches set in the Brady household. The show’s aesthetic was highly theatrical and campy—with shimmering costumes, high production choreography, and tongue-in-cheek references to 1970s variety-entertainment tropes.

Designed by noted special effects artist John Stears and manufactured by Ogle Design, the landspeeder prop was built on a real vehicle chassis. Specifically, it was a three-wheeled car called a Bond Bug. This allowed it to be driven and controlled in the desert, but it also presented the main challenge: how to hide the wheels.

To conceal the wheels, the special effects team mounted angled mirrors on the sides of the car. These mirrors reflected the desert ground, creating the illusion that the vehicle was hovering. When a person or object was in the reflection, it would appear to be underneath the vehicle.

For some shots, the crew used specific camera angles to hide the wheels. For long-distance shots, they even smeared a small amount of Vaseline or gelatin on the camera lens to create a subtle blur or heat haze near the ground. This helped to mask any imperfections in the mirror effect and enhanced the sense of a futuristic, levitating vehicle. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, reportedly called this blur “The Force Spot.”

“We tried several ideas during filming, and none of them seemed to work,” said Lucas (regarding the landspeeder’s hovering effect). “We finally tried using a mirror, and that came close, but it didn’t work, either. So when we went out to Death Valley, we redid the mirror and made it sturdier and made it longer, raised the car a little bit higher, and found a lake bed that had topography that was easier to work with. Then we shot it again, but that didn’t work because not enough care was taken to make the mirror and to get the speeder going fast enough. Finally, Bob Dalva came back with a crew and made it work. But he only got one shot, and we needed three. So then we sent another cameraman to get the final two shots using the same method.”

“The Model Shop helped out with the full-sized (Land)speeder when it came to the U.S. for late pickup shots in early 1977. We constructed a mirrored plex skirt that blocked the view of the landspeeder’s three tires, the true source of its propulsion. The mirror reflected the deset landscape underneath, creating the illusion of anti-gravity. We shot these scenes near Lake Mirage, the locale close to where our sandcrawler explored.”

In the later “Special Edition” releases of the film, released in 1997, Lucas and his team at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) used early digital effects to further clean up and refine the landspeeder effect, making it look even more seamless for a modern audience.

The landspeeder effect is a testament to the ingenuity of the original Star Wars special effects team, which had to rely on physical props and in-camera tricks to bring George Lucas’s vision to life. This low-tech approach to a high-tech concept is a big part of what makes the original film’s practical effects so iconic and beloved.